Political Wisdom: How Did Palin Do in Iowa?

By

Mary Lu Carnevale

Sep 18, 2010 6:30 am ET

Sarah Palin spoke before a crowd of 1,500 at the Iowa Republican Party’s annual Ronald Reagan fund-raising dinner in Des Moines Friday night, and the assessments are in: Yes, she’ll be running in 2012, and no, she’s not about to stop bucking the establishment.

At Politico, Ben Smith writes that she demanded that the GOP come together to support her candidates.

Palin did not – as some Iowa Republicans had hoped – make much reference to the state’s specific issues or its painstaking caucus process, though she opened with a reference to the state’s beauty and the birthday of its senior senator, Chuck Grassley.

The thrust of her speech, however, was a broad and confrontational rallying call to Republicans across the country.

The media came in for particular scorn, and Palin suggested repeatedly that reporters whose anonymous sources have characterized her falsely were betraying not just her, but also American soldiers who fight to protect the First Amendment.

Four years ago to the day, a fledgling Illinois senator named Barack Obama provided the first whiffs that he might transform the 2008 presidential race when he beguiled 3,000 Iowa Democrats at Sen. Tom Harkin’s annual outdoor steak fry. There were no overt statements from Obama beyond a coy, “I’m going to have to come back to Iowa a lot,” but one could sense his political potential among Democrats by staring at the rapt faces in the audience – a crowd scene that looked like it was lifted from a 1940s Frank Capra movie.

It is unfair to judge Palin by this standard, since it would have been difficult for even a reincarnated Pericles (or Ronald Reagan) to shine in the cavernous convention center ballroom, the site of GOP dinner. What came through more than anything in Palin’s speech was her simmering anger over the way candidates like O’Donnell and Joe Miller, who upended GOP incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski, have been belittled. “We can’t blow it, GOP,” Palin declared. “But we won’t wait for that political playbook to be handed to us from on high from the political elites.”